LIKE Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, I find myself wanting to ring up ‘old Baz Kershaw’. The insertion of personal history into an academic text that is to be found in The Radical in Performance, in itself radical, inspires this tactic. It also inspires my determination to refer to ‘Baz’ throughout this response. The available alternatives just don't feel right: ‘Kershaw’ carries reminders of the 1950s grammar school that (mis-) shaped me; ‘Professor Kershaw’ seems curiously over-formal in the context of my enjoyment of this book; ‘Barrie Kershaw’ (yes, I saw him once quoted as such in the THES) is frankly unfamiliar; ‘the author’ a coy statement of the obvious.